NEWS STORY: North and South bishops agree to disagree

c. 1997 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ North and South American bishops, meeting at their first intercontinental synod, have agreed to disagree on a number of sensitive issues, ranging from Roman Catholic parish life to resolving the debt crisis afflicting poor nations. Facing vexing and nettlesome problems, not the least of which is the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ North and South American bishops, meeting at their first intercontinental synod, have agreed to disagree on a number of sensitive issues, ranging from Roman Catholic parish life to resolving the debt crisis afflicting poor nations.

Facing vexing and nettlesome problems, not the least of which is the inability of many bishops to communicate in the same language, participants say their differences are fundamental. Yet there appears to be agreement that with changes in migration, trade and politics, the two Americas have become increasingly linked.”Differences came to the floor, but in a muted way with the sense that we’re not going to solve them here,”Archbishop Francis George of Chicago said Thursday (Dec. 3) as the synod entered its final week. Nonetheless, he said those differences”haven’t been enough to stop us from planning our future cooperation.” Brazilian Archbishop Luciano Mendes de Almeida of Mariana brought one of those nagging problems to the fore when he said North Americans and Europeans think of three things when they hear Brazil:”carnivals, the murder of children and soccer. In much of the world, Latin America doesn’t exist,”he said.


The stereotype is all the more unnerving, he said, given the 1 million Brazilians living in the United States.

Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, New Mexico, said he is still amazed many North Americans don’t realize he is from a U.S. state, not another country.”They ask me if I need a passport,”he said.”There is a lack of knowledge about Latin America in the United States.” And perhaps at the synod as well.

The bishops, who made their comments at a Vatican news conference, acknowledged that Pope John Paul II’s charge to them _ seeking solidarity in the quest to reinvigorate evangelization _ is easier said than done.

During the past three weeks of speeches and small group discussions, the challenges facing the church on the two continents became tangible.

For starters, many of the bishops do not speak each others’ language. With English, Spanish, Portuguese and French speakers among them, the bishops have found themselves segregated in the smaller discussion groups according to language. That means many North Americans are speaking to one another when they are here to communicate with their southern neighbors.”I think it would be fair to say that that is a weakness,”said George, who speaks Spanish fluently.”If there were more of us who were more linguistically competent in several languages it would, I think, be a better conversation.” More intractable problems, though, have surfaced. One of the chief differences is over what if anything should be done to alleviate the burden of debt many Latin countries have amassed and that has impeded economic growth. The southerners prefer full forgiveness of the debt, as does the pope, while the northerners are more circumspect. Many of them question whether debt forgiveness would have any lasting impact absent political and economic reforms.

Participants say the bishops are likely to call for a symbolic or partial debt relief measure in their recommendations to the pope, who will eventually issue a message, or”apostolic exhortation”on the synod. The pope is expected to visit three to five cities in the Americas within the next year to issue the synod conclusions.

Another area of dispute that has brought perhaps the most comment from the bishops is the spectacular growth in Protestant conversions among Catholics in Latin America, which the region’s bishops clearly blame on the United States.”So extensive is the phenomenon, that in Central America, the Caribbean and South America one can speak of a true invasion and a coordinated plan on the part of the (non-Catholic) sects to change the present religious identity of Latin America,”Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of Guadalajara told the synod in remarks reflecting the thinking of many Latin bishops.”Sect”has become so incendiary a word that the northerners have urged it be dropped in the final report to the pope in favor of”our brothers and sisters in Christ.””The idea is that we shouldn’t use the word if it’s going to cause a lot of trouble,”George said.”We’re saying our vocabulary has to be theological and in theology we don’t use that word for other Christians.” Still, despite the cultural divisions, the bishops say they have come to a clearer realization their futures are inexorably linked, from the increase in trade to the huge flux of Hispanic immigrants to the United States who make up the lions’ share of growth within the U.S. Catholic Church.”Our best vehicle for across the board evangelization is the parish,”Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles said in an interview.”We have to work together on pastoral outreach. And I think that’s really starting to come together.”But, he said, the process is requiring”a lot of myth breaking.”


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